Siri: The iPhone 4S App Can Speak to You in Different Languages -- But Not in Spanish

Apple succeeded in creating its usual monumental amount of online buzz with its announcement of the iPhone 4S and a personal assistant app called Siri, which will respond to voice commands.

You can ask it, for example, "Is it going to rain today?"

But what you won't be able to do is inquire, "¿Va a llover hoy?"

Because while Siri will come with English optimized for the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia and feature support in French and German, it will not, in its beta version at least, be accessible in Spanish.

"The initial supported language for an application many times has to do with the ethnic composition of the founders, how easy they think these features can be implemented, the familiarity of the team with the language and in many cases, available programming resources," said Ariel Coro, founder of Tu Tecnología and author of the upcoming book, El Salto.

"Spanish is a fairly difficult language to interpret for natural voice recognition since there are many variations which sound completely different to a voice recognition software," Coro added.

Apple CEO Tim Cook debuted Siri along with the updated iPhone at an event at its headquarters in Cupertino, California, on Tuesday. The app, which the company worked hard to secure as an Apple exclusive, will let you use natural language to perform tasks like asking for a weather forecast or getting directions, setting an alarm or making a calendar appointment, as well as searching Wikipedia.

But the app, which was used as an example of how the iPhone 4S will usher in a technological leap for mobile phones, will not feature support in Spanish, which Ethnologue lists as the fourth most common language in the world behind English.

Coro added that there is a way for Apple to work around the fact that Spanish is difficult to interpret through natural voice recognition software.

"The way other programs have handled this in the past is by training the application, but as we know, Apple will not sell a product which requires a time-intensive training process out of the box," he said.

"It doesn't mean that Spanish is not going to be supported," he continued. "It just means that they want to see how it goes and might have it scheduled for a future date."

An Apple spokesperson told Fox News Latino that it could not comment on the possibility of Spanish being included in the future. They were unable to offer a date as to when this might happen, either.

Though the capability might be available at a later date, some believe that Apple opens the door for a competitor to capitalize to the emerging online Hispanic market.

"Google and its cell phone partners are best positioned to attract U.S. Latinos and Spanish speakers worldwide on mobile devices with its acquisition of Motorola in combination with its Android market," he added. "Especially since the search behemoth offers phones at lower price points in comparison to Apple's."

Coro believes that Siri is a significant move, one in which Apple has invested heavily.

"If they can make this feature popular, they can then reshift the attention that has been stolen away by the competitiveness of Android phones," he said. "The new generation of phones like the DROID Bionic, the Galaxy SII and the Photon have many similar features in Android, comparable cameras, processors and bigger and better screens."

But Coro concluded with a swipe at an Apple announcement that featured upgrades and updates, but not the seminal shift to the iPhone 5 that was expected.

"The announcement of iPhone 4S instead of the iPhone 5 was a total and complete disappointment for Apple fans. It's been 16 months since the launch of the iPhone 4 and we were expecting and speculating on an innovative and complete redesign," he said.

"What we got was a phone which looks the same, has a little more horsepower under the hood, a nicer camera and a personal assistant that doesn't speak Spanish."